The present invention relates to handling poultry carts within poultry houses, and more particularly, the present invention relates to a portable handler for safely elevating poultry carts within narrow aisles of poultry houses.
Chicken and like poultry can be grown in high density cages within poultry houses. Merely for purposes of example, an average-sized poultry house may house about 85,000 to 100,000 live chickens. The high density cages are typically aligned in rows extending substantially the full length of the poultry house, and a narrow aisle, or walkway, is defined between each adjacent pair of rows of cages permitting access to the cages. As an example, an average-sized poultry house may have seven such aisles each being approximately 500 feet in length. The high density cages provide many stacked tiers of cages including upper tiers of cages elevated well above the floor of the aisle.
Chicken and like poultry are typically required to be relocated to and from various types of poultry houses, processing plants and the like. For example, chicks are typically permitted to grow for about eighteen weeks in a nursing house and are then relocated to a “layer” house for egg production and collection. At the end of the egg laying cycle, the chickens are relocated to processing plants. Transporting poultry to and from poultry houses and processing plants typically requires the poultry to be removed from cages and placed in mobile multi-compartmented poultry carts. Each cart may be designed to hold about 150 to 200 live chickens and may weigh approximately 600 to 800 pounds when fully loaded. Filling and/or emptying an average-sized poultry house typically requires the use of about 450 to 500 carts each of which must be loaded and/or unloaded and pushed throughout the length of the poultry house.
Simply for purposes of example, each mobile poultry cart may have a relatively rectangular frame supporting a few tiers of cages. The front and rear ends of each cart are typically supported on fixed and/or caster wheels. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,084,714 issued to Williams and 3,895,727 issued to Rucker disclose examples of mobile poultry carts.
Due to the limited space available within the narrow aisles of poultry houses, the carts may be required to be manually pushed and/or pulled through the aisles of the poultry house. The manual handling of mobile poultry carts is both a labor intensive and potentially dangerous procedure considering the significant size, weight, and number of carts and the distance that they must be traversed. As an improvement with respect to manually pushing and/or pulling mobile poultry carts through the aisles of the poultry houses, U.S. Pat. No. 7,500,448 B1 issued to Melhorn discloses a self-propelled poultry cage handler for use in moving mobile poultry carts through the aisles of a poultry house.
An additional problem with respect to handling poultry carts within poultry houses is that high density cages within poultry houses include several tiers of cages that extend well above the floor of the poultry house which makes manual unloading of fully-grown chickens from the cages difficult. For example, when fully grown chicken are to be removed from the upper tiers of high density cages, a worker must climb up the structure provided by the high density cages, grasp several fully-grown chickens from an upper level cage, climb down the structure provided by the high density cages, and place the chickens within the mobile poultry cart positioned and supported on the floor of the aisle of the poultry house. The worker needs to repeat this process a tremendous amount of times to empty the upper tiers of cages throughout the poultry house. Thus, the manual emptying of high density cages is a labor intensive and potentially dangerous activity considering the number of cages that must be emptied, the height of the upper tiers of the high density cages above the floor of the poultry house, the need to carry several fully grown chicken while ascending from the upper tiers, and the significant number of cages that must be emptied and distance that must be traversed.
Accordingly, there is a need for an apparatus and method for handling poultry within the narrow confines of poultry houses. Preferably, the apparatus and method should enable safe and efficient unloading of fully-grown poultry from upper tiers of high density cages into mobile poultry carts within narrow aisles of poultry houses.